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Can You Tell The Truth In A Small Town Analysis

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Can You Tell The Truth In A Small Town Analysis
“Can You Tell the Truth in a Small Town?” by Kathleen Norris describes the lack of acceptance of the truth in her small town. The African - Americans in Maya Angelou’s “Reclaiming Our Home Place” deal with similar pain felt from the persecution they receive from white citizens who fantasize about the good old “Gone With the Wind” days (Angelou 135). They do not want to face the truth they need to stand up and fight for their civil liberties instead they go north to escape. Written history becomes eradicated through novelized accounts of life in small towns that do not depict what it is like to live there. These novels are dangerous because they do nota portray the history, allowing residents to be in denial of their current situation. Norris …show more content…
This is an issue for African Americans migrating north after the Civil War faced when they tried to avoid persecution and racism that plagued them in the south. The African Americans thought if they moved North they could escape the truth and receive kindness and equality. When they arrived, they realized it was not much better, but many stayed and tried to start a new life than face the truth and their past and return home. These two stories deal with the inability to handle the truth and the lost history and culture that results from that. The problem is that people do not find relief in the truth. The small town residents in Norris’s story are similar to the African Americans in Angelou’s story in that regard. Norris struggles with the concept of writing about the small town while living in it because many of the residents cannot handle the truth and try to excommunicate residents who speak it. The African Americans are punished as well in Maya Angelou’s story because they struggle to handle the truth that the South is their home because they are being told it is not by white citizens. She describes the difficulty of convincing people they need to stand up and fight for their home rather than refuse to believe the truth and leave. “Can You Tell the Truth in a Small Town?” author Kathleen Norris describes that even people who leave the small town struggle with the truth, many “come to see the Dakota prairie as a lost Eden (Norris 129). The perception Norris described is caused by the inability to accept the truth and the value that these people have for their home. Also, this occurs because of the way that people avoid the truth in small towns to “make nice”. This behavior warps the perception of all the inhabitants making them think everything is better than it truly is to make themselves happy. This has ultimately caused their historians to “write local
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